A Nasty Article Was Written About Our Writers’ Group!!!

I run a writers’ group in Portland. Last week, a woman came to a meeting who represented herself as a writer looking for feedback and critique. But she did not tell us the truth about her real motives. She joined our meetup group with a fake name and a fake background, and she pretended to be an unpublished author (that’s where the legal definitions of “dishonest” and “fraud” come in, you see.) She had been recruited as a reporter for the Willamette Weekly. An article came out this week that presented us as freaks and our work as… well, it’s all in the article (and yes, fanfic was involved. This isn’t the first nasty article that paper has written about NC-17 fanfics, either.) I’m trying to get the word out so that other writers’ groups know what happened. For all we know, this is a new trend, and we’ll be seeing more of it.

However, there’s ONE good thing about it (I guess)… the FIRST sentence is:

I have read Harry Potter erotica. Sometimes, life is like that. One moment, you’re getting ready to read what you think will be a fun short story about a magic girl and boy, and in the next, Ginny and Draco are getting it on during a study session. Three days later, you’re sitting at a small table in a cafeteria surrounded by strangers and it’s your turn to say something about it to the person who wrote it.

3 thoughts on “A Nasty Article Was Written About Our Writers’ Group!!!”

The article was mean-spirited. What was Willamette Weekly looking to do? Maybe they should send an accomplished artist into a small local art group and make fun of the amateur artists. Or perhaps send a record producer into a local jam session and then ridicule them. That was a very poor idea for a bit of entertaining reading on the part of Willamette Weekly. I hope they lose a few readers who agree that it was in very poor taste.

I totally agree… after thinking about this some more, the thing that really bothers me has nothing to do with the actual writing that was ridiculed (except for the sake of the people in the group who never asked for that.) It’s that this person felt it necessary to be so dishonest and fraudulent, and that she fooled us all and then probably went home and laughed about it. I mean, this was very elaborate– she posted a fake profile on Meetup and sent fake emails to me, keeping up the deception all the while. But SHE is the one who has to live with being the kind of person who would do that. My writing was actually thrown off for a few days, but I AM BACK! Yay! (Waves the Determined to Finish the Book flag. 🙂

Thanks for stopping by my blog Cathy. I thought I’d return the visit. I like yours too and don’t worry, my kids are all grown. Thanks so much for posting this piece about the underhandedness that took place with your writer’s group. She probably would have gained some respect and been able to write an honest article had she been up front with you. As it stands, those types of free lancers have no credibility and what went around will come around. I just hope none of the members of the Portland group were hurt by her remarks.